Professor Danielle Celermajer

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Biographical details

My professional life has been characterised by moving between organisations whose principal focus is human rights policy, advocacy and scholarship, and seeking a greater integration between these dimensions of human rights work. Since joining the University of Sydney in 2005, I have had the privilege of establishing two postgraduate human rights programs aimed at forging precisely this type of integration between the best of scholarship and effective human rights practice. The second, the Masters of Human Rights and Democratisation (Asia Pacific Program) was established with a 1.5 million euro grant from the European Commission and is now in its sixth year with ongoing funding from the European Union and now forming part of the Global Campus of Human Rights programs.

Since 2012, I have been leading a multi-disciplinary international team seeking to identify and test new approaches to preventing torture in organisations where it is systematic and entrenched. Our team has sought to better understand the root causes of torture, particularly those residing in the cultures and processes of security organisations themselves. This project, also funded by the European Union has been working with police and police and military in Sri Lanka and Nepal in partnership with universities in those two countries.

Through these two programs and a range of others in the field of human rights, the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences has now built a highly innovative human rights program seeking to strengthen and deepen the contribution that humanities and social science scholars can make in the field of human rights.

Prior to joining the academy, I worked as a policy advisor and speechwriter to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner and the Race Discrimination Commissioner in the Australian Human rights Commission.

Research interests

My research interests in the field of human rights have orbited around three related questions. First, how can we better understand and map the social, political and economic structures and dynamics that underpin and sustain human rights violations? Second, how do we design interventions that will allow us to transform those structures as a means of preventing human rights violations and, more positively, protecting and promoting human rights? Third, what type of transformative work (symbolic and material) can and should be undertaken so as to attend to past violations, and lay the foundations for a future in which relationships and identities are not held in pathological and violent patterns? In exploring these questions, I work at the interface of theory and empirical research.

Parallel with my research in human rights, I also conduct more philosophical work on questions of responsiveness, memory, mourning and the relationship between the past and future. Engaging in particular with the thought of Hannah Arendt and Emmanuel Levinas, I am interested in what authentic attentiveness to other subjects demands of us, and what types of practices cultivate our capacity to be for and with the other.

Building on both of these bodies of work, I am now turning to questions about the possibilities of attentiveness, responsiveness and justice for the more-than-human world. What affective capacities and living practices will be required to provide the felt infrastructure for recognising the rights and interests of beings other than humans? How do we cultivate the dispositions that will allow us to be alive to our embeddedness in, and immanent relationship with the more than-human? What would justice for past atrocities entail and how could practices of reparative and transitional justice be developed in relation to the more-than-human? In asking these questions, again, my work insists of a fluid movement between research that takes us into the world of practice and lively theoretical reflection informed by and informing those practices.

Videos

Professor Danielle Celermajer talks about her research interests, the European Union funded Torture Prevention Programme and Masters of Human Rights and Democratisation (Asia Pacific Program), here, and below.

Selected grants

2015

2013

Academic Coordinator for Research Programme 'Implementation of the Convention of the Rights of persons with Disabilities (CRPD): the participation of Disabled People's Organisation (DPOs)'; Celermajer D; European Commission (Belgium)/Research Support.

Research to conduct collaborative research on assessing the effectiveness of a human rights-based approach to poverty eradication and development.; Celermajer D, Valiente-Riedl E; Australian Council for International Development/Universities-ACFID Linkage Grant.

Celermajer, D. (2014). The Politics of Indigenous Human Rights in the Era of Settler State Citizenship: Legacies of the Nexus between Sovereignty, Human Rights, and Citizenship. In Anna Yeatman, Peg Birmingham (Eds.), The Aporia of Rights: Explorations in Citizenship in the Era of Human Rights, (pp. 137-158). New York: Bloomsbury Academic. [More Information]

Celermajer, D., Moses, A. (2010). Australian Memory and the Apology to the Stolen Generations of Indigenous People. In Aleida Assmann and Sebastian Conrad (Eds.), Memory in a Global Age: Discourses, Practices and Trajectories, (pp. 32-58). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Celermajer, D. (2010). From the Religious to the Political Apology: How the Religious Prehistory of Apology Makes Sense of Collective Responsibility. In Christopher Allers and Marieke Smit (Eds.), Forgiveness in Perspective, (pp. 117-138). Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Celermajer, D. (2008). Can there be a Postsecular Education for Peace? In Tonya Huber-Warring (Eds.), Growing a Soul for Social Change: Building the Knowledge Base for Social Justice, (pp. 11-26). Charlotte, North Carolina: Information Age Publishing.

Celermajer, D. (2006). From the Levinasian apology to the political apology; reflections on ethical politics. Australasian Political Studies Association Annual Conference (APSA 2006), Newcastle: University of Newcastle.

Law, A., Valiente-Riedl, E., Celermajer, D. (2012). Measuring Social Change: Principles to Guide the Assessment of Human Rights-Based Approaches to Development, ACFID Research in Development Series Report No. 5, (pp. 1 - 17). Canberra, Australia: Australian Council For International Development (ACFID).

Law, A., Valiente-Riedl, E., Celermajer, D. (2011). Measuring Social Change: Principles to Guide the Assessment of Human Rights Based Approaches to Development, ACFID Research in Development Series Report No. 5, (pp. 1 - 20). Deakin, ACT, Australia: Australian Council for International Development.

Celermajer, D. (2014). The Politics of Indigenous Human Rights in the Era of Settler State Citizenship: Legacies of the Nexus between Sovereignty, Human Rights, and Citizenship. In Anna Yeatman, Peg Birmingham (Eds.), The Aporia of Rights: Explorations in Citizenship in the Era of Human Rights, (pp. 137-158). New York: Bloomsbury Academic. [More Information]

Law, A., Valiente-Riedl, E., Celermajer, D. (2012). Measuring Social Change: Principles to Guide the Assessment of Human Rights-Based Approaches to Development, ACFID Research in Development Series Report No. 5, (pp. 1 - 17). Canberra, Australia: Australian Council For International Development (ACFID).

Law, A., Valiente-Riedl, E., Celermajer, D. (2011). Measuring Social Change: Principles to Guide the Assessment of Human Rights Based Approaches to Development, ACFID Research in Development Series Report No. 5, (pp. 1 - 20). Deakin, ACT, Australia: Australian Council for International Development.

2010

Celermajer, D., Moses, A. (2010). Australian Memory and the Apology to the Stolen Generations of Indigenous People. In Aleida Assmann and Sebastian Conrad (Eds.), Memory in a Global Age: Discourses, Practices and Trajectories, (pp. 32-58). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Celermajer, D. (2010). From the Religious to the Political Apology: How the Religious Prehistory of Apology Makes Sense of Collective Responsibility. In Christopher Allers and Marieke Smit (Eds.), Forgiveness in Perspective, (pp. 117-138). Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Celermajer, D. (2009). Sins of the Nation and the Ritual of Apologies. New York, USA: Cambridge University Press.

2008

Celermajer, D. (2008). Can there be a Postsecular Education for Peace? In Tonya Huber-Warring (Eds.), Growing a Soul for Social Change: Building the Knowledge Base for Social Justice, (pp. 11-26). Charlotte, North Carolina: Information Age Publishing.

Celermajer, D. (2008). The State of Free Speech. Australian Journal of Political Science, 43(3), 495-511. [More Information]

2007

Celermajer, D. (2007). If Islam is our other, who are 'we'? Australian Journal of Social Issues, 42(1), 103-123. [More Information]

Celermajer, D. (2006). From the Levinasian apology to the political apology; reflections on ethical politics. Australasian Political Studies Association Annual Conference (APSA 2006), Newcastle: University of Newcastle.

Celermajer, D. (2006). Seeing the Light and Hearing the Call; the Aesthetics of Knowledge and Thought. Literature and Aesthetics, 16(2), 120-144.